Roger Waters

On one level - the surface level, really, the level where both the "Comfortably Numb"-loving classic-rock fan and lifelong Pink Floyd fanatic sit side by side in wonder at the sheer grandiosity of what they're witnessing on a chilly Thursday night at the Hollywood Bowl - on thatlevel, it was simply awesome.

That's such an overused (and misused) word these days. But seeing as Roger Waters has staged the ultimate post-Floyd experience - without half of that band, of course, but with all the over-the-top visual effects of their legendary '70s shows (some modernized, some not) - well, there's just no other word for it.

C'mon: Sensory-tweaking surround-sound and enough firepower to humble Kiss? An enormous cinematic backdrop to tie this Wagnerian expanse together anda giant inflatable pig that floated off toward the dark side of the full moon hanging over Hollywood?

Awesome, dude. Totally awesome.

This is how Waters works best - and frankly, it almost seems as if it's the only way he knows howto work.

When Floyd's brainy concept master returned to touring seven years ago, promoting no idea other than his past, he attempted to reign in marvels for smaller theaters. But at then-Universal Amphitheatre in 2000, his presentation felt dwarfed, muted, awkward - a shell of what it once was, or what it still could be.

For better and worse, his vision demands a gargantuan canvas to be fully realized. Now that earlier nebulous outing looks like a rehearsal precursor to the often masterful display Waters has conjured.

What he lacked then was motivation; Waters requires seismic global changes to compel him into first-rate action. The last time he was this convincing - or staged a spectacle this massive - he was performing "The Wall" from start to finish with a cavalcade of guest stars in Germany, not long after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

The fulfillment of a long-held promise not to perform the work live until that barrier was torn down, that stunt emanated from a rare feeling of hope from this philosopher-composer - that maybe the world isn't as far gone as cosmically detached cynics think it is. That event was born out of peace.

Waters' latest recapitulation of his well-worn but still deeply resonant themes, however - centered on sociopolitical alienation and the ravaging toll of war, and how both can lead everyday people to succumb to (or willfully seek out) altered states of consciousness, even numbing insanity - is born out of conflict.

Ostensibly it's an opportunity for Waters - rather shamelessly billed as "the creative genius of Pink Floyd" in ads for this world tour - to revive the brilliant "Dark Side of the Moon" in its entirety, which the 62-year-old bassist-vocalist and his capable large band do superbly in the evening's second half.

A futuristic stoner masterwork as ahead of its time today as it was when it arrived 33 years ago, it's nonetheless resoundingly now. There couldn't be a better time for a mind-blowing revival; the landscape may have changed (then it was Vietnam and economic recession, now it's Iraq and terrorism), but the widely shared sentiments it echoes are largely unchanged.

And when it's placed at the heart of Waters' more expansive, quasi-"Wall," crush-totalitarianism framework, its us-vs.-them-but-no-one-wins significance beams as starkly yet powerfully as the album's cold, symbolic cover, re-created in the sky above the Bowl's shell via an illuminated triangle and an array of hazy prismatic light.

But it's hardly the only piece in Waters' personal and political puzzle, a not-so-subtle display of strong statements that rivals Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's recent protest tour.

The show opens and closes with "Wall" segments, "Mother" more Orwellian than before, the encore of "Another Brick in the Wall Part II," the lament of "Vera" and the insistence to "Bring the Boys Back Home" accompanied by explosive fireballs. A suite from "The Final Cut," culminating in the scathing jibes of "The Fletcher Memorial Home" - in which decades of tyrannical world leaders are housed in an asylum where they watch each other on closed-circuit television - was updated to include the faces of Bush, Blair and bin Laden.

The only misstep - and it's a glaring one - is Waters' lone new song, "Leaving Beirut," a piece inspired by the kindness of a Lebanese family who took in a hitchhiking Waters at 17, when his world view was narrow and his xenophobia high. That, at 62, Waters could skillfully relate the life-changing details of this encounter - and in a Floyd-goes-doo-wop structure, with a noir comic-book backdrop to aid the plot - is admirable.

But midway through the song, he abandons his show-don't-tell approach and begins to rant. And no matter how much you or I may (or may not) agree with his views, his moralizing stuck out like a stray weed amid subtler but equally stirring commentary.

Maybe Waters thinks metaphors for evil just don't work in our apathetic age - and maybe he makes a good point. But he would have made a stronger one without half of that rambling song.

As it is, though, it's the only pockmark on what is surely the most tremendous Floydian experience since the real thing dissolved.

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